t books

After the pandemic due to COVID-19, smart working has become a practice everywhere in the world. Living in a work environment more and more influenced by video conferencing can make us believe that cultural differences between us and the people on the other end of the monitor can be overlooked: especially when, as happens all […]

I have three questions for you. How many times have you tried to: solve a problem without succeeding, and create an even more complicated situation? bring real change to a difficult situation without succeeding? use rational problem-solving techniques, miserably crashing into a persistent obstacle? If your answer to at least one of these questions is […]

Some preliminary information A book you are unlikely to be recommended because, like The Art of War, those who have read it tend to keep to themselves what they learned. The book is an ancient masterpiece of Chinese thinking and probably dates back to the end of the Ming era (1368-1644); since then, it has […]

This book is part of the non-fiction related to cognitive psychology that studies reasoning errors and mental traps (heuristics and bias) we fall into every day. For what reasons? The most diverse and not all negative. Reasoning errors are often due to “thinking shortcuts“, called heuristics, which we constantly use during the day, and which […]

What do Radovan Karadzic, Vladimir Putin, Rudolph Giuliani have in common? What characteristics distinguish former Mattel CEO Jill Barad, Levi Strauss CEO Robert Haas, and many other managers and politicians profiled in this book? Beyond the significant differences among them, according to Barbara Kellerman they share what is known as “negative leadership“: these people exert power, […]

This book is an essential tool for anyone who intends to approach systematically problem solving related to the most diverse situations. The author is George Polya, a Hungarian mathematician who taught first at ETH Zürich in Switzerland and then at Stanford University in the U.S.; the book was first published in 1945 and represents the […]

What is emotional intelligence?  Why can it help us to live better? There is an increasing tendency in companies to measure the intelligence of people, and more generally their effectiveness in dealing with complexity, through a wide range of competence assessment tools. However, my experiences with business coaching and assessment, in general, suggest that we […]

How to use the most powerful tool to help the brain to think, create, study, organise… What is a mind map? It is a form of graphic presentation of thought (ideas, knowledge, …) developed in its many aspects by the English cognitive psychologist Tony Buzan. Basically, the tool consists in using visual memory to structure […]

Here is a short story that will bring you closer to some essential aspects of change management, both in private and professional life. The book tells of four characters who live in a ‘labyrinth’ and are in a permanent search for a ‘cheese’ that makes them live comfortably. Sniff & Scurry are Mice; Hem & […]

The book helps to answer several very important questions: why are some people successful and others seem destined to fail in all their ventures? why do some people never give up? And what are their characteristics? can the feeling of powerlessness (the belief that what happens is not under our control) be learned or is […]